Dude I just want something other than your brain. He let his players adjust to their abilities. Did he ever adjust to his player's abilities. The facthat he let his players freelance is every coaches job. Even JVG and Brown allow players to "do their thing"...tis gotta be built into any system.

are you sure van gundy let his players to their thing?? better ask steve francis that.

anyway, if you look back and compare nelson to other coaches, nelly is one of the more open-minded and creative coaches to ever coach the game in terms of willing to try completely different things. run tmc was a perfect example. at the time, his approach was so unorthodox and even ridiculed, but he made them work. he had no big man, no defense, just have 3 guys killing teams on offense. that idea was supposed to suck, but he still got them to win 50+ games. of course, that style wasn't going to win any championships, but the issue wasn't an adjustement problem, but a personnel problem. you can only do so much with what he had.

in dallas, he got those guys to 50+ wins for 4 consecutive seasons. he practically built that team from scratch. i think his overall achievement is more impressive than what he didn't do in the playoffs. dallas was a stinker doormat in the nba for years before don nelson. how many guys can walk in and change the whole face of the team and make them into the elite level the way that nelson did? only a few. you don't achieve things like that by being "stubborn" or "rigid."

but anyway, i really think your whole bias against nellie is based on his half-season in new york when he was still experimenting with the team and when they didn't have an identity, but it's kinda funny you're sorta discrediting all his work for just those 50 games or so in new york. new york is just historically tough and still is. not much change can really be done over there in just half-a-season. it took van gundy awhile to get things going anyway. and it wasn't exactly a sudden transformation.

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but did Mr. Flex ever adjust his coaching to suit his player's abilities. did he adjust his coaching for the playoff run?

when nellie had tmc, he went to small ball. when tmc broke up, he adapted and played bigger with guys like victor alexander, chris gatling, tyrone hill, then also later with webber for that short period. sprewell was running the joint, but the offense at that time had a reformat and wasn't anything like run tmc. they still ran, but their inside presence was significantly more noticeable, and they did play more defense. again, this change would had been very obvious to you if you had actually watched any of the games instead of just reading articles from wikipedia.

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Its untrue. He would take a bunch of shots. Some were jumpers, most were runners of the wrong foot, some were fadaways. He wasn't a real big dunk guy, but he'd get some baseline, some fadeaways. I think most shots were 5-10 feet out. If its the dunks you are upset about, if Ewing could get to the basket more, he would have dunked more - but he faced doubleteams and didn't have the power of Shaq.

his favorite outside shot was the baseline angle. debating whether it's 15ft or 12ft is trivial. the bottom line is that he should had banged it inside more. he was supposed to be the next kareem-type center, a dominating big man that was supposed to carry his team to win championships. but that title actually turned out to be hakeem.

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I'm not sure what Nelson knew. He knew he wanted to change the way NY played. I think he thought more highly of Ewing's range than was appropriate and proably overrated Mason a little.

was it nelson that thought highly of ewing's range or was it ewing who thought highly of ewing's range? can't really tell. whenever he touched the ball faraway, he seemed very trigger happy.